On Sunday 07 December 2008 20:35:05 Brian Dessent wrote: > Jason Curl wrote: Jason, Your question has already been asked, and answered, several times recently, on the MinGW and MSYS mailing lists; you would do well to search their archives, e.g.: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.user/26315/focus=26324 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.user/27824/focus=27838 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.msys/4605 You might also consult the Wiki article here: http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS paying particular attention to the follow up comments regarding autoconf. You are doing all kinds of everything wrong here: > > I've just downloaded mingw-1.0.11, Er, what's that? Some kind of prehistoric release no one has heard of? I suspect you actually mean MSYS-1.0.11. ^^^^ > > installed m4-1.4.12 >From whence? This is surely your first fatal error; you *must* use the m4-1.4.7-MSYS release, from the `MSYS Supplementary Tools:Current Release:msysDTK-1.0.1' package collection on the MinGW download page at SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=67879 (Admittedly, SF's latest dumbing-down of the download page style has made this very difficult to find; please complain to them, and not to the MinGW project, about that). > > and ActivePerl 5.10.0. When I run configure it succeeds, but > > building autoconf fails complaining about needing GNU m4 1.4 or > > later. > > Activestate? That's most likely your problem. AS Perl can't cope > with POSIX path translation. Again, as Brian points out, this is another likely contributor to your problem; you should use the MSYS build of perl, which is found in the `MSYS Supplementary Tools:Technology Preview:Tools for MSYS-1.0.11' package collection, via the above link. > > I've made links to perl, removed the old version of m4 so there's > > only > > Do you mean copies? Because again, these tools don't know links. Unless you mean NTFS hard links, MS-Windows in general has no concept of links, in the *nix `symbolic-link' sense; (even the so-called symbolic-link support, allegedly present in Vista, is a dysfunctional joke). Sure, Cygwin subverts the MS-Windows `shortcut' feature, to emulate symbolic-links, but such "links" cannot be used outside of Cygwin itself. > > autom4te_perllibdir='..'/lib AUTOM4TE_CFG='../lib/autom4te.cfg' > > ../bin/autom4te -B '..'/lib -B '..'/lib --language M4sh > > --cache '' --melt ./autoconf.as -o autoconf.in > > The system cannot find the path specified. > > autom4te: need GNU m4 1.4 or later: /usr/local/bin/m4 > > You asked ActiveState perl to run the autom4te perl script, which > itself proceded to attempt to invoke /usr/local/bin/m4, because > that is the m4 that configure found. But AS Perl has no earthly > how to translate /usr/local/... into anything meaningful, because > it is a plain Win32 program. You need MSYS perl that knows how to > translate /usr/local/... its actual Win32 path before invoking it. > > You might also consider doing a VPATH style build. Don't waste time considering this; JUST DO IT! You are doomed to fail, otherwise. Regards, Keith. _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
